6 Signs You’re Disconnected From Your Power and How to Get It Back | The Mel Robbins Podcast
Mel Robbins (host), Dr. Thema Bryant (guest)
In this episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast, featuring Mel Robbins and Dr. Thema Bryant, 6 Signs You’re Disconnected From Your Power and How to Get It Back | The Mel Robbins Podcast explores reclaim Your Inner Power: From Psychological Homelessness To Homecoming Mel Robbins interviews psychologist, minister, and APA president Dr. Thema Bryant about what it means to be disconnected from yourself and how to come back ‘home’ to your authentic identity.
Reclaim Your Inner Power: From Psychological Homelessness To Homecoming
Mel Robbins interviews psychologist, minister, and APA president Dr. Thema Bryant about what it means to be disconnected from yourself and how to come back ‘home’ to your authentic identity.
Through stories, a West African eagle-and-chicken fable, and practical therapeutic tools, they explore “psychological homelessness,” trauma, toxic environments, and the feeling of living on autopilot or as a smaller version of yourself.
Dr. Bryant outlines signs that you’re cut off from your power, explains how trauma and conditioning teach you to settle and disconnect, and emphasizes that healing is a spiritual and psychological homecoming available to everyone.
They discuss concrete practices—breathwork, self-care, community care, morning rituals, challenging cognitive distortions, and reparenting yourself—that help you stop living like a ‘chicken,’ reclaim your voice, and begin to fly.
Key Takeaways
Feeling unsettled is a signal you are settling and disconnected.
Persistent feelings of powerlessness, emptiness, or being ‘unsettled’ often indicate you’re living misaligned with your truth—staying in jobs, relationships, or roles that require you to shrink or deny yourself.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Psychological homelessness starts to heal when you admit, “I miss myself.”
Honestly recognizing that you feel lost, numb, or like a stranger to yourself is the first step; you can’t come home if you won’t acknowledge that you’ve been wandering.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
You can come home to yourself even if you’ve never been ‘home’ before.
Even if trauma, stress, or early conditioning forced you into pure survival mode—people-pleasing, playing small, or constant productivity—you can still unfold into your authentic self later in life.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Busyness and excellence can hide unhealed wounds, not prove worthiness.
Overachievement and constant productivity often mask unresolved trauma; you may look strong and successful, but still be driven by insecurity, pain, or a need to prove you belong.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Irritability and ‘bad attitude’ can be depression and despair in disguise.
What looks like anger or hostility often covers deep sadness and hopelessness—recognizing this can shift you from reacting defensively to responding with softness and compassion, both to others and yourself.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Healing requires reclaiming your agency instead of waiting for others to change.
If you wait for apologies, recognition, or someone else’s healing before you begin your own, you keep your recovery hostage; the work is to take your healing out of their hands and back into yours.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Daily rituals and body-based practices ground you in your true self.
Simple acts like conscious breathing, scanning your body for tension, nourishing food, sleep, movement, and a purposeful morning routine help you arrive in your day as more than an employee or partner—anchored in who you really are.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Notable Quotes
“Can we get to the place where we can admit, ‘I miss myself’?”
— Dr. Thema Bryant
“The reason you feel unsettled is because you’re not supposed to settle.”
— Dr. Thema Bryant
“You have been treated like chickens, dating like chickens, picking jobs like chickens, but you’re not a chicken. You’re an eagle, so fly.”
— Dr. Thema Bryant
“I don’t want to be driven, I want to be called.”
— Dr. Thema Bryant (quoting coach Shannon Evette)
“I don’t want to keep my healing hostage waiting for the healing of those who harmed me.”
— Dr. Thema Bryant
Questions Answered in This Episode
In what areas of my life do I feel most unsettled, and how might that be revealing where I’m settling or disconnected from myself?
Mel Robbins interviews psychologist, minister, and APA president Dr. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Which survival strategies—people-pleasing, overworking, minimizing my needs—did I learn from trauma, and what would it look like to slowly let them go?
Through stories, a West African eagle-and-chicken fable, and practical therapeutic tools, they explore “psychological homelessness,” trauma, toxic environments, and the feeling of living on autopilot or as a smaller version of yourself.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
If I stopped waiting for certain people to apologize or change, what specific steps could I take this month to reclaim my healing and agency?
Dr. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How might my perceptions of ‘attitude,’ anger, or irritability in myself and others shift if I treated them as possible signals of despair or depression?
They discuss concrete practices—breathwork, self-care, community care, morning rituals, challenging cognitive distortions, and reparenting yourself—that help you stop living like a ‘chicken,’ reclaim your voice, and begin to fly.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What small, realistic morning or evening ritual could I commit to for the next 14 days to begin filling my own cup and coming home to myself?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
Today, it is gonna be one hell of a profound conversation. I just feel it in my bones because I'm going to introduce you to this woman named Dr. Thema Bryant. Our conversation today is gonna help you connect with the truth of who you are. Even if you've never truly met the most powerful version of yourself, she says, "You can always come back home to yourself." Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so glad that you tuned in to the podcast today. I'm actually out in Los Angeles for our daughter's college graduation, and while I was out here, I reached out to a woman that I have just... I, I don't even know how to describe the level of respect and awe. I've never met her before. You're gonna meet her the same moment that I meet her, and I just know that today, it is gonna be one hell of a profound conversation. I just feel it in my bones because I'm going to introduce you to this woman named Dr. Thema Bryant. Now, Dr. Thema wears so many hats, and the one thing that is the through line in her work is that people around the world who are seeking deeper connection and meaning in life trust her. They turn to her for guidance. She is a psychologist, a minister, a tenured professor at Pepperdine University. She's a New York Times best-selling author, and in 2023, she was named the very first Black female president of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Bryant completed her doctorate in clinical psychology at Duke University and her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School Center's Victims of Violence Program. Our conversation today will lead you on a journey back to who you really are, so that you can own your full identity and fly. Dr. Thema Bryant is gonna help you connect with the truth of who you are. Even if you've never truly met the most powerful version of yourself, she says, "You can always come back home to yourself." Dr. Thema Bryant's brand new book, Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole Authentic Self-
Yeah.
... it is a must-read.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Thema, I am so thrilled that you are here.
I am thrilled to be here. I love you, I love your work, and I love getting the word out about the journey home, because we need it.
Oh, do we ever. You know, I was... I'm, I'm pretty emotional today-
Yeah.
... because I'm here in Los Angeles because our, uh, one of our daughters is graduating from college-
Mm-hmm.
... in a couple of days, and I am going, after our interview, to hear her do her final senior performance.
Ah, beautiful.
And it's a full-circle moment 'cause I'm going to the theater where she got her invitation to audition-
Wow.
Install uListen to search the full transcript and get AI-powered insights
Get Full TranscriptGet more from every podcast
AI summaries, searchable transcripts, and fact-checking. Free forever.
Add to Chrome